


titania and the ass

by paris-mystere (Spellthief)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Multi, in which I lovingly roast both canon and popular ML fic tropes, loosely inspired by a midsummer night's dream
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-21 16:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spellthief/pseuds/paris-mystere
Summary: Let's be real: Chloé Bourgeois was never exactly a paragon of virtue, and she certainly isn't above using a little, ahem, black magic to get her way. So when Jagged Stone gives her a love potion that's sure to win Adrien's heart, of course she doesn't hesitate to use it. She just didn't expect all of...this... to happen.





	1. full of vexation come I, with complaint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [do-the-fandom-mash](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=do-the-fandom-mash).



> then will two at once woo one / that must needs be sport alone  
> and those things do best please me / that befall preposterously

The Grand Paris was a very nice hotel. Though it had been built nearly a hundred years ago, it had been very thoroughly modernized, and at a great expense. But André Bourgeois was a man who liked the very best things—the softest pillows, the sweetest perfume, the finest mahogany—and it had more than paid off in the end. Nobody did luxury like the Grand Paris—even the old Hôtel Ritz down the street looked shabby by comparison.

And yet, André did have one weakness, a terrible blemish marring his otherwise impeccable establishment.

It was his daughter.

Chloé Bourgeois was a force of nature, and not the pleasant kind. She was quick to anger, quicker to contempt, and prone to pettiness. She paraded around the hotel like she owned the place—which I suppose, dear reader, she arguably did—with no regard for anyone who might be in her path.

This was how, one crisp winter evening, she encountered a certain M. Jagged Stone.

* * *

Jagged Stone wasn’t his real name, of course. That would be ridiculous.

But whatever his real name actually was, nobody seemed to know it. Somehow, between all the contracts and licenses and perhaps one or two, ahem, slightly illegal backroom deals, Jagged Stone’s true name had remained safely secret. He was even registered at the hotel under his stage name: _Stone, Jagged/_ _checked-in_ _03-03_ _/_ _staying ?? nights_.

The Grand Paris was a sufficiently expensive hotel that relatively few people could afford to spend _“??”_ nights there. But Jagged Stone had been there for a year—two years? three?—now, and showed no sign that he would be leaving any time soon.

He spent most of his days in his room, jamming to old tunes on his guitar and mostly not working on his next album, but occasionally he’d get hit with a burst of inspiration and flit off to somewhere appropriate to compose his newest song. His current muse was the view of the Eiffel Tower from the roof of the Grand Paris. _Specifically_ the view from the Grand Paris—nowhere else would do.

This was all well and good, except that the roof of the Grand Paris happened to be just above Chloé Bourgeois’s bedroom. And, well… guitars were _loud_.

The first night, Chloé convinced herself that it wasn’t actually a problem. She sat up late in her bedroom, filing her nails and sipping tea, and was quite pleased with her _exclusive_ , insider first-look at Jagged’s newest work.

The second and third nights, Chloé was still pleased—but the bags under her eyes were beginning to mar her beautiful complexion. She began to hope that Jagged’s newest music would soon start to sound a little more musical and a little less… _new._

By the fifth night, Chloé was irritated. By the sixth, she was irate. So Chloé did the one thing that always seemed to get her way: she threw a tantrum.

She stormed up the stairs to the roof. (The elevator would not have been dramatic enough—she felt a visceral need to _stomp_ up every one of the steps.) She threw the doors open with such extravagant flair that even her mother would have been impressed. And then she screamed, in her shrillest voice—

_**"SHUT! UP!!!”** _

Jagged Stone’s fingers stilled on his guitar. He glanced up, blinking owlishly, and smiled when he saw Chloé.

“Hey there!” he called out, beaming. “Do you wanna rock’n’roll?”

“Do I want to—?” Chloé began, lip curled in disgust. “No, you idiot, I want to you _shut up!_ Didn’t you just hear me—?”

“No can do,” Jagged said, laughing good-naturedly. Chloé stared at him with a mixture of shock and outrage. She was not used to being defied. “The rock is in my soul. I can’t stop until I’ve got it all out, y’know?”

“Well, some of us are trying to sleep, you dimwitted, slimy-haired toad!”

“Oh-ho, that’s a good one,” Jagged said kindly. “What’s your name, little lady?”

Chloé looked aghast. “Um, excuse me? Are you saying you _don’t know who I am?_ ”

Jagged laughed again at that, which only made Chloé more upset. But he seemed to be entirely unaware of Chloé’s ill mood. “You don’t have to tell me your name if you don’t want to,” he said obliviously. “Names have power, y’know?”

Chloé _did_ know, though perhaps not in quite the way that Jagged meant.

“My daddy owns this hotel, and if you don’t do exactly what I say, then he’ll—”

“So what’s on your mind?” Jagged interrupted. He strummed another entirely-too-loud chord on his electric guitar. “Tell me about yourself, hotelier’s daughter.”

Chloé glared. “Have you even been listening to me at all?” she demanded.

“I have been listening,” Jagged said. “You seem like you’re upset.”

“I _am_ upset!” Chloé hissed. “Your guitar music is interfering with my beauty sleep.”

“Nuh-uh,” Jagged said. Chloé furrowed her brow—by now more taken aback than angry—and Jagged grinned slightly. “That’s not it! That’s just the prelude, the mise-en-scène, a mere contrivance of plot. This moment, right here and now—this is the first chapter of your story.” He plucked a single string on his guitar, the note reverberating gently in the winter air. “So what’s the story? What’s really keeping you up at night?”

“...your music?” Chloé tried.

There was a knowing twinkle in Jagged’s eye. “And what else?” he prompted gently.

Chloé hesitated a moment. She sat down delicately in one of the roof chairs, and checked discretely over her shoulder to see whether anyone else had joined them in the past few minutes. “Well,” she began tentatively, “there _is_ something else that’s been bothering me lately.”

Jagged waited silently for her to continue, and Chloé—needing little prompting to talk about herself in the first place—kept going. “There’s this boy I like,” she admitted. “And obviously he likes me too. Or he would, if he had any sense.”

“Boys often lack sense,” Jagged agreed sympathetically.

“I don’t know how to get him to notice me,” Chloé went on. “He’s so dumb sometimes! We obviously have all this fabulous romantic chemistry, but he thinks that we’re just friends.”

“Ah,” Jagged said, “I have just the thing for that!” He patted down his pockets, searching for something, and eventually produced a small vial from the fob pocket of his jeans.

“For you, my lady,” he said, holding it out towards Chloé. “A little Christmas present.”

The vial sparkled in the light. Its color was mesmerizing, as vivid and varied as a sunset, shifting subtly between pink and orange and the occasional flash of yellow-green. The liquid inside sloshed around viscously as Jagged wiggled it slightly in front of Chloé’s face.

“What is it?” Chloé asked. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears—the vial was strangely hypnotic in its beauty.

“It’s a love potion,” Jagged explained. Chloé’s eyes widened. “It can—”

Before he had a chance to finish his explanation, Chloé snatched the vial out of his hands. “So am I supposed to drink this? Or—no—I have to give it to him, right? Does he have to drink the whole thing? Or should I—?”

“Whoa, whoa,” Jagged interrupted her, laughing good-naturedly. He set down one hand heavily upon her shoulder and Chloé, with dreams of the future already dancing before her eyes, did not object. “Just one sip is enough.”

Chloé glanced up at him. He was smiling impishly, and if she’d been a cleverer girl, she might have realized that there was mischief afoot.

“One sip?” she asked incredulously. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he said.

* * *

 

It was a simple enough matter to get Adrien to drink the love potion. All Chloé needed to do was put a drop of it into a cup of water and then give it to him. Or rather—she ordered Sabrina to put a drop of potion into the water and then give it to him. Adrien was trusting by nature, and sipped politely on the drink without even asking what it was.

“This is very good,” he said, in the earnest but bland way that Adrien often was. “It tastes a bit like… candy corn?”

Sabrina looked at Chloé, clearly puzzled. Chloé looked at Adrien, smiling prettily while batting her eyelashes, and ignored Sabrina entirely. Alas, the effect was lost on Adrien, who had already turned his attention back to the paper cup in his hand. He swirled the drink around experimentally, brow furrowed.

“Huh,” he said. He downed the rest of the drink in one gulp and wandered away with the empty cup, without bothering to explain himself to Chloé or Sabrina.

“Was that…?” Sabrina began nervously.

“He’s clearly overcome with love for me,” Chloé said, preening. Sabrina looked skeptical, but Chloé was too self-absorbed to notice. “Clear my schedule, I’m going to be busy.”

* * *

Adrien was, needless to say, not overcome with love for Chloé.

After the first sip of candy-water, he felt a tingling in his throat. The second sip pushed the feeling all the way down to his chest, and the third made his whole body feel warm and… floaty?

As he walked away from Chloé and Sabrina, he found himself smiling for no reason.

“Oh boy,” Plagg said, sounding genuinely apprehensive.

Adrien glanced over his shoulder to check that no one was around. When he saw that he was alone, he turned his attention down towards his shirt. “What is it, Plagg?” he asked, speaking in the general direction of his appendix.

Plagg emerged from his hiding place in Adrien’s shirt, and went to sniff the now-empty paper cup. “That wasn’t just a new recipe she was trying out on you.” He sniffed the cup again. “It might smell like delicious Camembert, but your friend Chloé is playing with some powerful dark magic.”

Adrien, eternally good-natured, laughed off Plagg’s concerns. “Dark magic? That doesn’t sound like Chloé.”

Plagg turned his eyes skyward. _Humans!_ They could be so dense sometimes.

“Oh no, not at all,” the kwami agreed dryly. “I must have been thinking of someone else. Your _other_ selfish childhood friend. How silly of me.”

“That must be it,” Adrien agreed cheerfully. He was still smiling, grinning obliviously at nothing, and Plagg felt a faint twinge of worry.

“Adrien?” he asked. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Better than alright,” Adrien said. He looked directly at Plagg and said, perfectly serious, “I just realized that I’m in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”


	2. most gallant for love

It was a chilly spring evening in Paris, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng was on the terrace above her bedroom. She was prepared for a cozy night at home, curled up in her chair and wrapped in a heavy shawl, with two mugs of hot chocolate.

She was alone and not expecting anyone to join her, and so you may be wondering, dear reader, why she had two mugs of chocolate prepared. If you were to ask her yourself, she would not have been able to give you an answer. Was she hoping that someone unexpected might appear? Did she worry that she would accidentally spill one of the cups in her clumsiness? Or did she realize, on some subconscious level, that she was trapped in a tropey fanfiction?

Regardless of circumstance, she had not been waiting for Chat Noir, and was visibly surprised when he joined her on the terrace. She was even more surprised when he, red-faced and nervous, held out a bouquet of flowers for her.

The bouquet was slightly crumpled—the result, no doubt, of being carried by a superhero bounding recklessly across Parisian rooftops. It was a charming arrangement of pretty yellow flowers that Marinette didn’t recognize, and a few bright white daisies.

“F-for you,” Chat Noir stuttered, breathless, when Marinette didn’t say anything.

M arinette wordlessly accepted the bouquet. She looked down at the flowers, clearly puzzled, then back up at her superhero partner. Chat Noir bit down on his lip.

“What are you doing?” she asked flatly.

Chat Noir glanced down nervously at his feet. “... w ooing you?” he tried, hesitant.

Now, Marinette had a plenty high opinion of herself, and she knew perfectly well that Chat Noir harbored feelings for her alter-ego, but she found it hard to believe that he’d _also_ somehow become smitten with her civilian self. They’d only had a handful of encounters before, and each one had been only the briefest of meetings—hardly enough time to develop romantic feelings.

“Is this because of an akuma?” She glanced briefly over her shoulder, checking Paris for some sign that Hawk Moth was up to no good again. But everything was still peaceful and quiet, with nary a supervillain in sight. And, perhaps more importantly, her phone hadn’t blown up with notifications from the Ladyblog yet.

“Of course not!” Chat exclaimed, sounding mildly offended. “I just—”

He cut off abruptly, his face turning a particularly tomato-like shade of red. He cleared his throat and then finished, in one breathless mumble, “IjustrealizedthatI’minlovewithyou.”

“Gesundheit,” said Marinette.

She took a moment to take a sip of her hot chocolate, just long enough for her to put her thoughts in order. Then she set the cup gently aside. “Chat Noir,” she said, “I appreciate the flowers. But this is all very sudden—we’ve only met twice before!”

Chat’s face screwed up into a frown. “I’m sure it was more than twice,” he said, not sounding sure about it at all.

Marinette hesitated. She had a long and storied history with Chat Noir, of course, but most of that history had happened while she was transformed into Ladybug. She’d encountered him out-of-costume as well, but upon thinking about it, she wasn’t sure just how many times it had been. More than once, certainly. Perhaps even more than twice.

“Well anyway,” Marinette continued, dismissing that thought, “you can’t possibly love me. You barely even know me.”

Chat pouted. “You don’t know that.” he countered. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe I _do_ know you. Maybe I see you all the time when I’m not transformed.”

Marinette did not entertain that possibility for even a second. “You don’t.” She took another sip from her hot chocolate and then added pointedly, “Besides, I don’t like you. I have a crush on Adrien Agreste.”

Chat Noir looked completely stunned. Marinette had heard the expression “eyes as wide as dinner plates” before, but she wouldn’t have thought to use it to describe anyone until she saw Chat’s expression at that very moment. “Adrien Agreste?” he squeaked out, as if he could hardly believe it.

“Ye-es?” Marinette said nervously. It was not the kind of thing that she normally confessed to, but Chat Noir _was_ her superhero partner, and she had discovered that she was quite comfortable confessing any number of things to him. But she had not expected this response.

Chat Noir looked straight at her, then down at his gloved hands, then back at Marinette. “Oh god,” he said. “This may have been a bad plan. I’ve got to go.”

At that, he ran off, leaping off the edge of her terrace without so much as a goodbye. This frankly left Marinette rather confused and a little bit miffed. Even if she hadn’t returned his affections, it was rather rude to confess your love to someone and then just run off like that, wasn’t it?

In the end, Marinette drank both mugs of hot chocolate herself.

* * *

Twenty-four hours after Jagged Stone gave Chloé Bourgeois the magic love potion, he was still on the roof of the Grand Paris, contemplating the elegant beauty of the Eiffel Tower and trying to figure out how to capture the feeling of it in the form of a rockin’ guitar solo. He had not made any progress on this matter when Chloé Bourgeois burst out from the elevator, with her red-headed sycophant trailing close behind.

“ _YOU!_ ” she shrieked. Jagged Stone set down his guitar and smiled beatifically at her. “This is all your fault!”

“It is?” Jagged asked innocently.

“It _is!_ ” Chloé snapped. “Your love potion didn’t work! I gave it to Adrien, but instead of falling in love with me, now he’s obsessed with Marinette Dupain-Cheng!”

“It’s true,” Sabrina piped up helpfully. “He asked me for advice picking out a bouquet.”

“This is ridiculous, utterly _ridiculous!”_ Chloé snapped. She pointed an accusatory finger at Jagged Stone. “I demand a refund.”

“Well, consider yourself refunded, I guess,” Jagged said, as good-natured as ever. He turned back to his guitar, picking it up and idly strumming a few chords. “But you weren’t supposed to give the potion to _him_.”

“I wasn’t—I what?” Chloé sputtered.

“You were supposed to drink the potion yourself,” Jagged explained. He laughed a little a Chloé’s wide-eyed stare of shocked disbelief. “It doesn’t force anyone to fall in love with you. That would be super unethical, you know.”

“Oh, that’s a good point,” Sabrina said thoughtfully. “That _would_ be kind of unethical, wouldn’t it?”

Chloé did not think that was a good point. She was silently fuming, her hands balled up into fists. She was searching for the right insult, but words escaped her entirely. She settled instead for a long, strangled wail of fury.

“The potion helps you realize your true feelings,” Jagged explained kindly, “and gives you the insight to act on them. If your friend is pursuing some other girl after drinking the potion, that just means that she’s his True Love, not you.”

Chloé clenched her teeth together. “ _NOT ME?_ ” she demanded. “ That’s not possible! How could anyone, least of all my darling Adrikins, choose _Marinette Dupain-Cheng_ when he could have had _me?_ ”

Jagged was either oblivious to Chloé’s rage or intentionally ignoring it, and Chloé didn’t know which possibility bothered her more. “Hearts can be fickle!” Jagged advised, stern but still smiling. “Just because she’s his True Love today doesn’t mean that she will be tomorrow. If you try drinking the potion for yourself, I bet that’ll help.”

“Yeah, maybe it will!” Chloé said snidely. Then she turned abruptly on her heel and stormed off. “Come on, Sabrina, we don’t need him.”

Sabrina scurried quickly after her. Once they were safely back in the elevator, she turned to Chloé and asked, “Are you really going to do it?”

“What, drink the potion myself?” Chloé scoffed. “Of course not. There must be someone else in our class who has a crush on Marinette. If I give the potion to _them_ , then that’ll force Adrien to back off, and he’ll realize that he’s really meant to be with _me_.”

Sabrina shifted in place nervously. “ Are you sure that’s a good idea, Chloé?” she asked uncertainly. “ Jagged Stone said—”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Chloé interrupted. “Hey—Nino likes Marinette, right? Take this and sneak a couple of drops in his food at school tomorrow.” She passed the vial of love potion to Sabrina.

Sabrina held the vial delicately, like she was afraid it might jump to life at any moment. “ M-me? Are you sure about this?”

“Well, I’m not doing it myself.” The bell in the elevator rang as they reached their floor, and Chloé strode out, flipping her hair back over one shoulder. “Don’t worry, this can’t possibly go wrong.”

* * *

The next day at lunch, Nino settled in comfortably with half a baguette from the Dupain-Cheng bakery and a thermos of his grandmother’s lentil soup. His grandmother’s soup was world famous—or, at least, locally famous—and it was still piping hot. As he opened the thermos, the scent wafted out gently, and Nino found himself smiling. This was gonna be a good lunch.

“Hey, babe,” Alya said. She slid down into the bench next to him, but instead of getting out her own lunch, she frowned and took a long, hard look at the thermos. Her face twisted into an expression of disgust, as if the steel container had done something to personally offend her.

“Uh… is something wrong, Alya?” Nino eventually asked.

“Your soup,” she said. She spent another moment glaring openly at the thermos before saying bluntly, “It smells awful.”

Nino was instantly offended on behalf of his grandmother. “ Hey!” he protested, drawing the thermos in protectively towards his body. “ This soup is world famous! Or at least _really_ well known among my family and neighbors! You can’t just go insulting my grandmother’s cooking like that.”

Alya looked skeptical. “ It smells like elephant dung,” she said.

“Elephant dung?” Nino sputtered. He lifted the thermos up close to his face and took a quick sniff, just to check whether he was going crazy, and then whirled back to face Alya. “What do you mean, elephant dung? This is a classic Moroccan recipe! _With delicious Moroccan spices!_ It doesn’t smell like _elephant dung!_ ”

“Well, I think it does,” Alya said. She shrugged. “I’m not trying to be mean, that’s just what it smells like. I’ve spent enough time at the zoo to know.”

Nino glowered at her. “Well unless elephant cages smell like rosemary to you, you’re totally off-base.”

Alya snatched the spoon out of Nino’s hand and, before he could protest, scooped up the tiniest spoonful of soup to taste.

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully, handing the spoon back to Nino. He braced himself for another insult and prepared to defend his grandmother’s honor against Alya’s slanderous nonsense, but instead she said, “It’s actually pretty good.”

Nino relaxed slightly. “ See, I told you!”

Alya settled back on thee bench, a thoughtful look on her face.

“Still smells weird though,” she said.


	3. ill met by moonlight

On the second night, Marinette was prepared for Chat Noir.

He was clearly cursed. That was the only explanation for his sudden, strange behavior and she, as a good friend, was going to do everything in her power to help him. She was waiting on her terrace, surrounded by small bowls and dishes of various assorted substances: salt, incense, rosewater, frog legs, magic crystals. Whatever black magic he might be afflicted by, she was ready for it.

What she was _not_ ready for was Alya.

While Marinette was carefully scanning the Parisian skyline for any sign of her love-addled superhero partner, Alya entered Marinette’s home through the front door. Marinette’s parents—by now quite used to seeing Alya pop by at all hours of the day—cheerfully greeted the girl, and without hesitation she dashed up the stairs to Marinette’s bedroom, and then up again to the terrace above.

At the sound of the door opening behind her, Marinette nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Oh my gosh, Alya!” she exclaimed, whirling around. “You startled me!”

“Sorry,” Alya said. She forced a small smile, which gave Marinette pause. “I just needed to talk to you.”

Something about Alya’s voice made Marinette suddenly worried. Her tone was… different. There was a certain melancholy in her voice, a seriousness that Marinette wasn’t accustomed to.

“Of course,” Marinette said nervously. Alya sat down beside her, and Marinette reached over to grab one of her hands. “What’s wrong, Alya?”

Alya smiled again, a little sadly. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said softly. She gently squeezed Marinette’s hands. “Um, I just wanted to tell you—Nino and I broke up.”

Marinette gasped aloud. She’d never been the type to conceal her emotions, and her shock was writ clearly on her face. “No!” she exclaimed, horrified. “But things were going so well with you two!”

Alya bit down on her lip and glanced away. “That’s the thing, though,” she said. “They weren’t.”

“But—what happened?”

There was a moment of silence. Alya took a deep breath and turned her eyes skyward. Night was falling quickly, and the first few stars were visible in the darkening sky.

“Well,” Alya began slowly. “Nino and I just clicked, you know?”

Marinette _did_ know, which was part of the reason why she found this news so surprising. But she kept her mouth shut and let Alya go on explaining.

“We were such great friends,” Alya continued. “So we thought, what the heck? Why not give romance a shot?”

Alya turned back to Marinette and smiled again. Marinette waited anxiously, still holding her breath.

“But it wasn’t like that,” Alya continued. “We love each other a lot, but we’re not _in_ love. So we decided to go back to being friends.”

“Oh,” Marinette said uncertainly. She did not know how to react to this news, and so she mostly did not react at all. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes,” Alya said, and at last a genuine smile lit up her features. “But, um, there’s on other thing I wanted to tell you.”

Marinette’s pulse quickened, as she felt another stab of anxiety in her chest. But she tried to stay calm, waiting as patiently as possible for Alya’s next revelation.

It took Alya a moment to work up to it. She closed her eyes and took in another deep breath, and for a long moment the only sounds were the summer crickets and Marinette’s heartbeat pounding in her own ear.

“Part of the reason I tried so hard to make things work with Nino was because I just wanted to be normal,” Alya explained cautiously. “Because the truth is, I’m in love with _you_.”

Marinette’s mouth fell open.

* * *

Adrien had backed himself into something of a corner.

Probably the sensible thing to do would be to attempt to court Marinette as his normal, civilian self, and forget entirely about his brief flirtations with her as Chat Noir. But if there was one thing that Adrien lacked, it was sense. So here he was, transformed back into his superhero self, carrying a box of heart-shaped chocolates in one hand, and heading out to see Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

He did not have a clear idea of what he was doing, or how he intended to make this work, and he probably would have made an absolute mess of things in ordinary circumstances, so perhaps it was lucky that he caught Marinette just after she had received some rather shocking news. She was sitting in silent contemplation on her terrace, still stunned by the bombshell Alya had just dropped on her, and unsure what to do with the tempest of her emotions.

When she saw Chat Noir arriving, she roused slightly from her stupor, and settled down a little deeper in her chair. “Chat Noir,” she said distantly. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m going to be able to break your curse tonight.”

There were a lot of potential responses to a statement like that. Chat Noir shuffled through them all in his head before ultimately deciding not to respond directly to it at all. After a moment’s hesitation, he dropped down off the ledge and surreptitiously concealed the box of chocolates behind a potted plant.

“Did something happen, Marinette? You seem upset.”

“Oh—I’m not upset,” Marinette quickly explained. “I just… I learned something new about my best friend, and I feel terrible for never noticing before.”

Chat’s brow furrowed in concern. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Marinette hesitated.

“Okay,” she began, “you absolutely can not tell _anyone_ about this, but...”

* * *

“So?” Chloé asked. “Has my darling Adrikins finally realized the error of his ways?”

Sabrina rocked nervously back on her heels. “We-ell,” she said slowly. “No, it doesn’t seem so. He was picking out a box of chocolates for Marinette. He was going to get the cherry cordials, but I suggested caramels instead, since Marinette is allergic—”

“You _helped him?!”_ Chloé interrupted furiously.

Sabrina winced. “Maybe just a little bit,” she admitted. “But I heard that Nino broke up with Alya!” she added quickly.

Chloé blinked a few times. “Nino was dating Alya?” she asked. Sabrina nodded, and Chloé tilted her head slightly to one side. This was new information to her, and she needed a few moments to parse out this frankly unexpected revelation. “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she eventually concluded. “Is he going to ask Marinette out?”

Sabrina tapped her fingers nervously together and looked down at her feet. “Um,” she began. “I don’t think so. He said he was going to spend some time ‘working on some sick beats’ instead.”

“Ugh,” Chloé said. “This is ridiculous!”

She stormed out of her bedroom, with Sabrina following closely behind. She _stomped_ up every one of the stairs—some of them twice, just for good measure—and threw open the doors to the hotel roof.

Jagged Stone was sitting cross-legged by the edge of the pool. He had swapped out his usual electric guitar for an electric mandolin, and he was playing quick little arpeggios on it. He glanced up as Chloé approached, and smiled brightly.

“Hotelier’s daughter!” he called out. “How did the potion work out for you?”

“I gave it to Nino, but it didn’t work!” Chloé complained. She stamped one foot, like the bratty child she was. “He’s not in love with Marinette, and Adrien still doesn’t love _me!”_

“Hmm,” Jagged said. He strummed a chord on his mandolin—C sharp minor—and continued, sounding a little perplexed, “Normally this is the part where I would advise you to drink the potion for yourself. But I did that already, and it didn’t seem to work.”

Chloé scoffed. “Why would I drink it myself? What good is that going to do?”

“What indeed?” Jagged asked philosophically.

Chloé crossed her arms over her chest and flipped her hair over one shoulder. “Besides,” she said petulantly, “I already have a new plan. And this time I’m _sure_ it’ll work.”


	4. upon thy eyes I throw / all the power this charm doth owe

Jagged Stone smiled mischievously. “So what are you going to do now?”

Chloé set her mouth into a line. Her eyes narrowed slightly, flashing with uncharacteristic determination.

“There’s only one thing left to do,” she said. “I’m gonna give the love potion to the _entire class_.”


	5. a marvelous convenient place

If there was one thing that Chloé truly appreciated about Collège Françoise Dupont, it was the administrators’ uncanny ability to always be holding a social event whenever the plot demanded it. This time, it was a small, informal Halloween celebration being held in Mme Bustier’s classroom. No one had dressed up for the occasion, but Mme Bustier had made a token effort to decorate the classroom with pumpkins and plastic skeletons.

“I feel like this school year has been, like, ten thousand years long,” Chloé muttered to Sabrina. “Don’t we usually get a break from classes at the end of October?”

Sabrina smiled vacantly. “Time is an illusion,” she said brightly. “But I made the punch exactly like you told me to!”

 _Made_ was perhaps something of an exaggeration. Chloé had just purchased several bottles of fruit punch-flavored vitamin water, then instructed Sabrinaa to add the rest of Jagged Stone’s love potion to them. But Sabrina had done an admirable job of it—she’d gotten a nice punch bowl from home and dutifully mixed in the love potion.

The table was covered with various treats brought in by the other students—hors d’oeuvres prepared by Alya’s mother, macarons from the Dupain-Cheng bakery, a suspicious-looking cheese platter brought in by Kim. Sabrina’s crystal punch bowl occupied one edge of the table, full of sparkling pink… flavored water… just waiting to be ladled into plastic cups. The other edge of the table was decorated with potted purple chrysanthemums, courtesy of Rose.

“I just think they’re pretty,” Rose explained, carefully aligning the last pot _just so_. “And seasonally appropriate!”

Chloé arched one eyebrow skeptically. She opened her mouth, ready to make a snide comment, but nothing came to mind. She closed her mouth again. After a moment’s pause, she reluctantly acknowledged, “Yeah, actually, that checks out.”

* * *

“Nino, I have made a terrible mistake.”

Adrien was sitting in the darkest corner of the classroom—which was, admittedly, just about as bright as the rest of the room—nursing a plastic cup of punch. It was the same candy-flavored beverage that Chloé had given him the other day, but this time instead of making him feel warm and tingly, it made him feel like an idiot.

“What’s up, man?” Nino asked. “Would some Cabécou help?”

Nino offered his plate to Adrien, but Adrien waved him off. “No,” he said. “Cheese won’t help.”

“Huh,” Nino said. He popped a cube of goat cheese into his mouth. “That sounds pretty serious, my dude.”

It was serious.

Adrien had, unthinkingly, confessed his love to Marinette while transformed as Chat Noir. Now he was stuck courting her in his superhero form. And while that had all seemed like a perfectly wonderful idea last night, sneaking out from under Nathalie’s watchful eye to go see Marinette on her balcony, by the light of day Adrien could clearly see the error of his ways.

Adrien saw Marinette _all the time_ in his civilian life! Right now, at this very moment, he could see her on the other side of the classroom, joking and laughing with Juleka and Mylène. Her eyes were lit up in delight, her smiles easy and genuine, and Adrien watched mournfully, wanting more than anything to go be with her too. But if he did that, he risked outing himself as Chat Noir.

The two of them had stayed up until nearly dawn last night, just sitting on Marinette’s balcony and talking. It had started innocently enough, with Marinette explaining what had happened between her and Alya, but that had somehow escalated into hours of deep discussion and shared secrets. Marinette had laid her soul bare in front of him, and Adrien had responded in kind. Adrien had never felt such a deep, intimate bond with another person before—not even Ladybug.

And now he was stuck here, sulking while he watched Marinette from across the room, unwilling to risk talking to her while in this form.

Adrien was still searching for some way to summarize this all for Nino without revealing his secret identity, but Nino followed Adrien’s gaze towards the girls on the other side of the room and puzzled together enough to save him the trouble of explaining.

“Yeah, Marinette is pretty awesome,” Nino said genially. “I think half the guys in the class have had a crush on her at some point or another. And some of the girls too.”

“I’ve ruined everything,” Adrien said despondently.

Adrien, it must be said, had something of a flair for the melodramatic. Nino knew this well, and while he was sympathetic to Adrien’s romantic woes, he wasn’t particularly worried. He patted Adrien gently and the shoulder, and said as kindly as possible, “I’m sure it’s not so bad.”

“But what about you?” Adrien asked, suddenly remembering that Nino had romantic woes of his own. “I heard that you and Alya...”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Nino said. “It was a mutual thing. Me and Alya are great friends, but I realized I didn’t want to be with her romantically. I was pursuing romance because I felt socially obligated too, but I realized that I don’t need to be in a relationship.”

“Really?” Adrien asked. Romance was something that was ingrained into his very soul; the idea of _not_ wanting to be in a relationship was frankly foreign to him.

But Nino seemed genuinely content with his decision. “Yeah, man,” he said. “I’ve decided that I’m gonna focus on my true passion instead: music. You should check out this remix I’ve been working on, it’s turning out really great.”

* * *

Marinette eyed the punch bowl suspiciously.

“No way,” she said firmly. “I’m not drinking that. Chloé probably, like, spit in it or something.”

There was a quiet murmur as the other girls considered the possibility. It _was_ the kind of thing that Chloé would do.

“I dunno,” Alix said. She downed another gulp of punch from her plastic cup, then went to refill it. “It seems fine to me.” After a moment’s pause, she added “I mean, it tastes terrible. Like artificially flavored water. But I don’t think there’s anything weird about it.”

But Marinette was not convinced. “Knowing Chloé, it’s probably flavored _bathwater_ ,” she grumbled.

The other girls glanced down at their cups, then across the room at Chloé. Most of them kept sipping at their drinks, though perhaps a little more nervously than they had been before.

* * *

“This punch is really wonderful,” Caline Bustier lied pleasantly.

Caline was good at lying. Not because she was duplicitous by nature—she wasn’t—but because she was a teacher, and that was her job sometimes. It wasn’t that she _liked_ misleading her students, but she’d learned by now that the occasional fib could work wonders on a student’s academic or personal development. And goodness only knew that Chloé could use some of that.

“It was so nice of you and Sabrina to work together on this,” she continued. The lying usually worked better if it was based at least a little bit on truth.

“Sure, I guess,” Chloé said dismissively. She had hardly touched her own punch, instead opting to chew nervously on the rim of the plastic cup.

Her plan, which had seemed so brilliant only last night, suddenly seemed… _less_ brilliant.

Lots of people in the class liked Marinette. Surely at least _one_ of them was harboring a secret crush on her? And then, with Marinette sufficiently distracted, there would be nothing to stop Chloé from swooping in to steal Adrien.

Nothing except Chloé’s own cowardice, anyway.

Mme Bustier, recognizing that Chloé was having a rare moment of self-reflection, smiled sympathetically. “Is something on your mind, Chloé?”

Chloé hesitated, biting down on her lower lip. “Mme Bustier," she began nervously, "do you know how to... get a guy to like you?”

“Have you tried telling him how you feel?” Mme Bustier asked. By the way Chloé’s face blanched, it was obvious that she hadn’t. “That’s usually a good first step. In fact, that reminds me of something that I’ve been meaning to do.”

Mme Bustier strode over to the door leaned out into the hallway. “Hey, Armand!” she called down to the courtyard below. “You want to get dinner sometime?”

Chloé’s eyes widened in shock. Her mouth fell open and she watched in something akin to abject horror. “Sure, seven sounds great,” Mme Bustier said.

By the time she returned, Chloé had regained a little—though, admittedly, not that much—of her dignity. “You mean you can just _do_ that?” she asked, teetering somewhere between fear and admiration. “You can just ask somebody out without 200k of slowburn will-they-won’t-they buildup?”

Mme Bustier laughed, though not unkindly. “Of course you can, Chloé,” she said. “Your love life doesn’t have to be some kind of fairytale romance. Sometimes you have to just go for it.”

“But what if it doesn’t work? What if he doesn’t feel the same way?”

Mme Bustier shrugged. “Sometimes that happens, it’s true. But you’ll never know unless you try.”

Chloé pressed her lips together into a line. She did not like that answer, not one bit, even if a part of her—very deep down—suspected that Mme Bustier was right.

She glanced down at her watch. It had only been 6,500 words so far.

“Okay,” Chloé eventually conceded. “But I’m going to wait until at least ten thousand before I try anything drastic.”


	6. confounding oath on oath

That evening, Chat Noir again appeared on Marinette’s terrace.

Marinette tried to glower at him, but found that the corners of her mouth were twisting up ever-so-slightly, no matter how hard she tried not to. She held her face like that for a long moment, caught halfway between two expressions, before finally giving in.

“You are incorrigible,” she said, hiding her smile behind her hand and quickly looking away.

“Yes,” Chat agreed pleasantly.

He did not come bearing gifts this time. He had come with the intent to tell Marinette the truth—the _full_ truth, and to heck with the consequences—but now, sitting here beside her, he discovered that he was too much of a coward, and so he said nothing at all. The two of them sat in comfortable silence for a long moment.

Eventually, Marinette spoke for him. “You know, I’ve been wondering about something lately. Aren’t you supposed to be in love with Ladybug?” She spoke very casually, as if the answer to this inquiry did not matter to her even in the slightest.

“It’s complicated,” Chat Noir said, deflecting. “Love is very complicated in general, you know.”

Marinette did know. These were the thoughts currently running through her head:

  1. She was in love with Adrien Agreste. Because of course she was! That was all very nice and straightforward.
  2. Except that she was maybe, just a little bit, in love with Chat Noir too.

Well—who wouldn’t be? Just a _little bit_ , mind you. But Chat Noir was good and he was reliable and he had nice arms and—well, whatever. The details weren’t important. But there was something awfully nice about these quiet moments they had been sharing together, and it was making Marinette question everything.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
  3. She maybe—just _maybe!—_ might have the teeniest-tiniest hints of romantic feelings for Alya too.

It was not something that had ever crossed her mind before, but then Alya had come and confessed to her and now Marinette didn’t know _what_ to think. She’d never thought about other girls in a romantic way before, least of Alya—but now that the idea had been put in her head she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Alya was pretty, and kind, and she was fiercely passionate about the things that she loved, and Marinette’s heart felt light and fluttery at the thought that _she_ might be one of those things too.




By now Marinette was blushing. Suddenly feeling anxious and jittery, she turned her attention back to Chat Noir.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she mumbled awkwardly, and Chat Noir was only too happy to change the topic.

* * *

At school the next day, something about the classroom felt… _off_.

Marinette could not name what precisely was wrong. It was as though an aura had fallen about the room, something a little bit magic and a little bit dangerous, and although everyone looked more-or-less than same way they had yesterday, she could tell that there was something different about them today.

Rose sitting quietly, pensive but not distracted. Kim was fidgeting in his seat, anxious with a nervous energy. And in the back of the classroom, Nathaniel was doodling dreamily in his sketchbook, absorbed entirely in his own world.

Well—on second thought, none of that was too unusual.

Marinette turned towards Alix as she walked towards her seat. “Is it just me, or does everybody seem kind of… _weird_ today?”

Alix raised one eyebrow. She glanced around at the other students and, apparently finding nothing amiss, shrugged. “I dunno. Looks pretty normal to me.”

Marinette frowned. Maybe she was just letting her imagination get away with her.

* * *

Sabrina was absent from school.

That was unusual. Sabrina rarely missed school—indeed, most of the students in Mme Bustier’s class had perfect attendance records—and it made Chloé feel just a little nervous. She hadn’t done her own schoolwork in several years, after all.

“All right, everyone,” Mme Bustier said, signaling the start of class. “Today, in honor of the start of spring, we’re going to be explicating some spring-themed poems. You’ll be working in groups of three.” A hand went up almost instantly near the back of the classroom. “Yes, Max?”

Max adjusted his glasses slightly before asking, “Mme Bustier, isn’t this assignment a bit too easy for eighth-grade students?”

Mme Bustier arched one eyebrow. “Are you volunteering for more work?” she asked playfully.

Max shook his head and she continued briskly, “All right, then. You’ll be partnered with Marinette and Alya. The next group will be Kim, Chloé, and Sabrina.”

Now it was Chloé’s hand that shot up. “Mme Bustier, Sabrina isn’t here today.”

Mme Bustier paused a moment, jotting down a quick note. “In that case, it’ll just be the two of you working together. I hope that’s not too much trouble.”

In Chloé’s opinion, it _was_ too much trouble, but Mme Bustier didn’t give her any time to respond. She quickly went through the rest of the groups, and then passed out copies of the poems they were supposed to be analyzing. Reluctantly, Chloé turned around in her seat to face Kim.

But before they even began on their work, Kim looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Chloé, I have something important I want to tell you.”

In that moment, Chloé saw her life flash before her eyes. She’d thought that Kim had gotten over his crush on her, but obviously he hadn’t. The love potion must have reawakened his feelings for her. Somehow, in all of her scheming and plotting, Chloé had not foreseen this possible outcome. Now she was doomed to spend the rest of eternity rejecting Kim’s hopeless advances.

“I don’t like you anymore,” Kim said.

Relief was quickly followed by indignation. “You _what?_ ”

“I don’t like you anymore,” Kim said. He put his hands on his waist and puffed out his chest slightly. “Wow, that actually felt really good to say!”

“Excuse me?” Chloé demanded. “How dare you! You can’t say that to me, I—”

“Sorry, Chloé, I like someone else now.”

“ _Someone else?_ ” Chloé was near screeching now. “Who else could ever possibly compare to the one and only Chloé Bourgeois?”

“It’s nothing personal. I just realized that I’m in love with my best friend!” Kim said cheerfully. Then, realizing what he had confessed, he quickly added, “But, um—that’s a secret, don’t tell anyone.”

Chloé frowned. She did not know who was friends with whom in the class, because that would require paying attention to other people in her class, and caring about their relationships with people other than her. Normally she made Sabrina keep track of this kind of thing for her, but of course Sabrina wasn’t here today.

Chloé glanced around the room, mentally sizing up her fellow classmates. “You like… Alix?” she guessed.

“Alix?” Kim looked genuinely startled. “No, of course not! Max is my best friend.”

Chloé’s eyes grew wide. “You like _Max?_ ” she exclaimed.

Kim’s cheeks flushed red. “Hey, you don’t have to go shouting it to everyone,” he said, discreetly checking to see whether anyone had overheard. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

But Chloé did not have much respect for other people’s boundaries, and as such was rotten at keeping secrets. So she easily ignored Kim’s anguished cries of horror, and shouted unapologetically for all the class to hear, “HEY MAX! KIM HAS A CRUSH ON YOU!”

The room went silent. All eyes turned first to Chloé, then to Kim, then to Max.

Then they turned to Marinette. She rose up abruptly from her seat, her hands balled up into fists on the table in front of her.

“That was low, even for you, Chloé!” she snapped. “Why would you do that to poor Kim?”

Chloé rolled her eyes. “Do what?” she asked.

She was not feigning ignorance. She genuinely did not understand what she had done to upset Marinette so, and that just made Marinette more furious.

Chloé was only saved from certain doom by the intercession of Max himself. He set one hand lightly on Marinette’s arm, calmly adjusted his glasses, and said, “It’s all right, Marinette. As chance would have it, I also have a crush on Kim.”

* * *

In the back of the classroom, Adrien genuinely teared up watching Max and Kim. Rose offered him a lavender-scented tissue, which he gratefully accepted.

“That’s so nice,” Rose said, dabbing at her own eyes. “So romantic!”

“It’s perfect,” Adrien agreed with a watery smile. “If only all relationships worked themselves out so neatly.”

“If only,” Juleka agreed somberly. She had drawn her knees up to her chest and was watching the new couple with a longing look in her eyes.

Adrien turned back to his group partners. “What do you girls think? Should I just tell Marinette the truth?”

Both girls glanced briefly at each other, then quickly looked away.

“I don’t know—” Juleka began.

“It might not work out,” Rose said, speaking at the same time.

“Like, what if you ruin your friendship by telling her?” Juleka said. For the second time that morning, she glanced briefly over at Rose and quickly away again. There was a melancholy look in her eyes. “Maybe it’s safer not to say anything at all.”

Adrien did value his friendship with Marinette quite a lot. “That would be awful,” he agreed. “But would Marinette really let something like that get in the way of our friendship?”

“She might,” Rose said distantly. “What if it changes her opinion of you? What if she starts thinking that you’re a terrible person, and she doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore? What if she’s so horrified that she _cuts you out of her life completely?!”_

Adrien paused, brow furrowed. “Are we… still talking about the same thing?”

“It’s probably better to just go back to the way things were,” Juleka said morosely. “If you reset the status quo at the end of each episode, you don’t have to worry about continuity. Or rejection.”

“You think I should just… stop? Pretend that nothing ever happened?”

Both girls nodded vigorously.

Adrien thought about it for a while. It was the safer option, certainly. It might be painful, to be in love with someone from afar, too afraid to ever admit his true feelings—but it would be better than getting totally rejected, wouldn’t it?

“You’re right,” he eventually decided. “It's just too risky. We have to go back to the way things were.”


End file.
